233 Butts - 650 metres
As some of you know I went to Japan last autumn. I fell in love with the place. One of the many things that impressed me was the cleanliness of the country - its countryside and its cities. It pleased me to see that thirty-four million people could live in Tokyo and keep it so clean. I respect this immensely and it gives me hope. Clearly it is possible to live in a clean city. But how on earth do you change people's behaviour. How do you nudge them?
The ideeah for this entry came to me over two days. On the first I again noticed how much garbage covered our streets. Walking to work after getting off the bus I decided to count the number of cigarette butts I could spot. The distance covered, according to Google Earth, was 650 metres. Over that distance I noticed 233 butts. I did not slow down to count all the butts at street corners. At times I could not count fast enough. There were many, therefore, that I missed. My count was 233. If you assume a sidewalk is about a metre wide you could say I scanned 650 square metres. So the density of butts was at least 0.35 butts per square metre.
Part two of my ideeah came the day after while reading the book "Nudge" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. It is an interesting read that discusses how organizations can use something called choice architecture to help consumers make better decisions. One needs to understand how people decide to take certain actions - the pressures of the group, peers, of perception. Anyhow, on page 60 of the edition I am reading, the author highlights a campaign that the State of Texas organized to reduce the amount of litter on its streets and highways - Don't Mess with Texas.
The idea is that if you do not want people to behave a certain way you had better not tell them that most people behave that certain way. Ie. if you want people to not binge drink you better get the message out that most people do not binge drink. If you want people to not litter you better let them know that most people do not litter. Human behaviour is strongly influenced by a desire of wanting to comply, fit-in and not stand out. At the same time the campaigns need to appeal to the target. It turns out that most of the litter bugs in Texas were 18 to 24 years old or so. They were male. They would not react all that well to some government authority telling them what to do.
So Don't Mess with Texas was born. It has red white and blue all over it. It is bold, it is tough looking and it appeals to that Texas, and young male, stereotype of independence and strength. The result is that littering in Texas has dropped by a third since 2001. Social pressures kicked in.
In Japan you stand out if you litter. A litterbug will not fit in. The peer pressure is to not litter. In North America and Europe. for certain age groups, you will stand out if you do not litter. By walking a few metres to throw out your butt peers will look at you and think you nerdy, weird, a freak, a goody two-shoes. By creating a campaign that is cool and hip, that strikes a chord with the guilty demographic, Texas has managed to alter the average behaviour of young men and, consequently, moved this group think closer to a non-littering majority. They have been nudged towards better behaviour.
We need to figure how to do the same across North America and Europe. To make respect of public property an act of the majority.
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